underseage.studio

AI Search Optimisation, Australia

Get found when your customers ask AI instead of Google.

AI search optimisation is the work of becoming the business an assistant names when someone asks it for a recommendation. It comes down to three things: letting the AI crawlers read your site, writing answers a model can quote, and being described the same way everywhere else on the web.

I build for that from the Northern Rivers, for small businesses across Australia. The first thing I check is whether ChatGPT is allowed to read your site at all, because plenty of Australian sites are blocking it without knowing.

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What Changed

People stopped searching and started asking.

A customer who used to type "shed builder ballina" into Google and work through ten blue links now asks an assistant "I'm in Alstonville and I want a shed built, who should I use?" and gets three names. If you are not one of the three, you are not in the consideration set at all. There is no page two to be found on.

That changes what the work is. Google ranks your page, so the page can win. An assistant writes a sentence, so it needs something it can quote and enough agreement across the web to be confident naming you. Researchers at Princeton and IIT Delhi tested this directly in 2024 and found that adding clear statistics, quotes and citations to a page lifted how often generative engines surfaced it. Plain, checkable, specific writing wins here in a way it never quite did on Google.

The Work

Four layers, in the order that matters.

Most of this is unglamorous and most of it is never done, which is why so few businesses have bothered yet. That is the opportunity.

  1. 1. Access. Confirm GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended can reach your site, fix the robots.txt rules that block them, and publish an llms.txt so the models get a clean summary of what you do instead of guessing from your navigation.
  2. 2. Answers. Rewrite the pages so the direct answer sits in the first sentence, not after four paragraphs of preamble. Real questions as headings, prices as numbers, specifics instead of adjectives. Anything a model cannot quote in one line is invisible to it.
  3. 3. Structure. Schema markup that tells a machine what your business is, what you sell, where you work and what the answers to your common questions are. Organisation, Service, FAQ and Person markup, checked against what is actually on the page rather than bolted on.
  4. 4. Agreement. The same business name, the same phone number, the same description across Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and the Australian directories that models read. Assistants recommend a business when several independent sources say the same thing about it. This is the slow part and the part that decides it.

The Honest Part

What nobody can promise you.

There is no dashboard for this. No rank tracker, no submission form, no way to pay for placement. Ask ChatGPT the same question twice and you can get two different answers. Anyone selling you a guaranteed position in an AI answer is selling you something that does not exist.

What is real: the technical layer is fully controllable and usually finished in a week or two. Being named by an assistant builds over roughly six months and depends on work across the wider web, not just your site. I will tell you which of your competitors are already ahead of you and why, and I will tell you if your site is fine and you should spend the money elsewhere. Under Seage Studio's own site runs every technique on this page, and I will show you exactly what it has and has not produced so far rather than a screenshot of someone else's results.

How We Work

Check first, build second.

  1. 1. Audit. Crawler access, schema, page structure, business listings and what the assistants currently say when asked about your category in your area. A short written report, yours to keep either way.
  2. 2. Fix. The technical layer, done properly and in one pass. Crawler rules, llms.txt, schema, answer-first rewrites on the pages that matter.
  3. 3. Consistency. Business details matched across the profiles and directories models read. Fewer listings, all correct, beats a hundred submissions.
  4. 4. Watch. A set of buyer questions run across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI each month, logged so you can see whether you are being named, alongside anyone else in your category.

Pricing

Audit first, then ongoing if it is worth it.

The audit and the technical fix are quoted after I look at your site, because the work depends entirely on what is already there. Ongoing AI search work runs from $100 per month alongside a care plan, covering the monitoring, content refreshes and keeping your details consistent as platforms change.

If the audit finds your site is already readable and well structured, I will say so and you can stop there. Start a project enquiry and I will run the first check on your site before you commit anything.

Common Questions

The honest answers.

What is AI search optimisation?

AI search optimisation is the work of making a business the answer an AI assistant gives when someone asks it for a recommendation. It is also called AEO (answer engine optimisation) or GEO (generative engine optimisation). Three things decide whether you get named: whether the AI crawlers are allowed to read your site at all, whether your pages answer real questions in plain language a model can lift, and whether other sites on the web say the same thing about you. The first is a technical fix, the second is content, the third takes months and cannot be bought.

Is this just SEO with a new name?

There is real overlap and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Clean structure, fast pages, schema markup and clear service and location information help in both. The difference is what wins. Google ranks pages, so a page can win on links and authority. An AI assistant composes an answer, so it favours whatever it can quote directly and whatever several independent sources agree on. That is why a plain answer at the top of a page and a mention on a forum or a directory can matter more here than they ever did for a blue link.

How do I know if ChatGPT can even read my website?

Check your robots.txt file for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. Plenty of Australian sites are blocking all four without knowing it, usually because a plugin or a host added a blanket rule to stop scrapers. If those crawlers are blocked, no amount of content work will get you named, because the model has never seen your site. This is the first thing I check and it is often the whole problem.

How long does it take before an AI actually recommends my business?

Expect around six months for the off-site part, and no honest person will give you a date. The technical layer (crawler access, schema, answer-first pages, llms.txt) can be finished in a week or two, and that is the part fully in your control. Getting mentioned across the wider web, which is the part that decides whether a model recommends you over a competitor, builds slowly. What you can have quickly is certainty that nothing on your side is blocking it.

Can you guarantee I will show up in ChatGPT?

No, and neither can anyone else. There is no ranking dashboard, no submission form and no paid placement. Answers vary between users, between sessions and between models, and they change without notice. What I can do is make your site readable to every major AI crawler, structure your answers so they are easy to quote, get your business details consistent across the places models actually read, and track what the assistants say about you month to month so you can see movement rather than guess at it.

What does it cost?

The technical audit and fix is quoted after I look at your site, because the work depends on what is already there. Ongoing AI search work runs from $100 per month alongside a care plan, which covers the monitoring, the content refreshes and keeping your details consistent as things change. If you only ever do the audit and the fixes and never come back, that is a fine outcome and I will tell you so.

Which AI assistants are worth optimising for in Australia?

ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot cover almost everything an Australian customer will use. Two of those are worth knowing about specifically. Copilot and ChatGPT's search lean on Bing, which is why Bing Webmaster Tools and Bing Places matter far more than their search share suggests. Google Business Profile questions are now answered by Gemini through Ask Maps, so a complete profile with real reviews is directly feeding an AI answer whether you optimised for it or not.

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